Where have you been?

When I returned home to the Denver International Airport last week and posted my location on Facebook, I got an interesting question from one of my friends.  “Where have you been?”  Normally simple to answer, it was a little more complicated this time.

The straightforward answer would have been spending a week in Snowbird, UT serving as a Guide for the 2011 Session 3 of the Sigma Chi Horizon’s program.  The Horizons program (http://www2.sigmachi.org/horizons/index.phtml) is a leadership-training program for undergraduate Sigma Chi members where alumni like myself come back and serve as guides on their “leadership journey.”  It combines outside adventure with inner reflection to learn what values based leadership is really about.  After going through training last year, this was my “rookie year” as a guide.

But that simple answer would really under state things quite a bit.  Because as well as getting very close with the young men that I mentored, as well as my fellow alumni who helped with the program, I went on the same “leadership journey” that all of the participants did.  In the process of “teaching” the material I learned I was not necessarily “living” the material, so Horizons taught me to become more authentic and hopefully bring that back home.

It also helped me to reach new heights as the attached video shows.  In training last year they never had us try this “leap of faith” probably because they worried we might not come back.  It was an amazing experience, like the rest of the week, and so that is why it was so difficult to answer the simple question of “where have you been?”